Malaga contributes one in four new inhabitants to Andalucía region over the last 12 months
The INE's latest provisional statistics show that the Costa del Sol province is one of just three in the whole of Spain to have lost population in the third quarter of the year
Malaga has gained 13,204 residents in the last 12 months and now has a total population of 1,802,417 people, according to the continuous population survey results published this Tuesday by Spain's INE national statistics institute. It is the Andalusian province that has added the most population between 1 October 2024 and the same date this year, well ahead of the next two: Almeria (11,952 inhabitants more, reaching 779,673 residents in total) and Seville (up by 11,481 to 1,984,893). In fact, within the region, Cordoba is the only one with fewer residents (-2,881) than 12 months ago, now at 770,879. Furthermore, Jaen's demographic gain is a mere 692, bringing its total to just over 618,653. This means that Malaga province accounts for 26.5% of the population growth for the whole region. One in four of the region's new inhabitants has chosen Malaga as their place of residence. This also means that the Costa del Sol province is gaining population at a higher-than-expected rate, since Malaga residents now make up 20% of Andalucía's population, or one in five.
Taking Spain as a whole, Malaga is the eighth province with the largest, absolute population increase over the last 12 months. Still, in this case, Malaga should be higher in the ranking, as it is the sixth most populated province in Spain. Madrid, with 74,424 more inhabitants, up to 7.167 million people in total, is the location that has gained the most population in the last 12 months, followed by Barcelona, Alicante, Valencia, Zaragoza, Murcia and Tarragona.
In relative terms, Malaga has fallen even further in the ranking of the country's provinces ordered by population growth. It is also below the Spanish average. Nationwide, the population increase of 474,454 inhabitants in the last 12 months to a total of 49,442,844 residents represents a rise of nearly 1%. Meanwhile, Malaga's increase of 13,204 inhabitants to 1.802 million people represents a rise of only 0.74%. In contrast, the population growth in Alicante and Castellón, the most demographically dynamic provinces, is above 2%. Moreover, that of Guadalajara and Zaragoza is close to the same 2%.
Meanwhile, at the other end of the ranking, Cordoba has lost 0.37% of its residents in the last year, while Jaen has barely gained 0.1%.
13,216 new, foreign-born residents
have chosen to live in Malaga province in the last 12 months, more than compensating for the loss of the 12 residents leaving who were born in Spain.
Malaga is showing more resistance than Andalucía in general in retaining its native-born residents, because the region has lost almost 10,000 residents born in Spain. This loss has been offset by adding nearly 60,000 foreigners, a figure to which the Costa del Sol province contributes just over 22%.
Quarterly decline... before the INE revises the data?
The picture for the third quarter of 2025 is somewhat different from that of the last 12 months. For Spain as a whole, the INE reports a growth of 105,488 inhabitants between April and October, reaching the aforementioned record of over 49.4 million people. However, in this landscape of generalised demographic expansion, three provinces stand out as falling behind: Cordoba with 1,034 inhabitants lost in that quarter, then Malaga with 782 fewer inhabitants in October than in April (although it gained population over the rolling 12 months) and lastly Seville, which has lost 77 inhabitants in the last three months.
The INE initially reported a population decrease of 639 people for Malaga province in the first quarter of 2025. This figure was revised the following quarter, resulting in a substantial increase of over 4,100 inhabitants. That figure has, once again, been corrected upwards, bringing Malaga's total population growth recorded between 1 January and 1 April to 4,663 residents. In the second quarter of the year, the growth, according to the revised figure released this Tuesday, was 5,878 residents. The data remains provisional until more than a year after its publication. The INE might revise any quarterly data released going back as far as April 2024.
The statistics published on Tuesday also report on the three main origins of migrants arriving in Malaga in the last quarter: in first place is Morocco with 760 new arrivals, followed by Colombia, which has brought 700 new residents to the province and, in third place, is Argentina with 630. With arrivals, there are also some departures - people are also leaving the Costa del Sol. The top three return destinations, going top-down, are Morocco (380), those moving to other parts of Spain (260) and the Ukraine, where it seems 240 people have returned in the last quarter, despite the ongoing Russian invasion and war.
